An icebound ship is a stuck ship — or so Heroic Age polar exploration accounts would have it. The best-known facts about the best-known historical polar expeditions (the Northwest Passage…
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Contemporaries Essays, Stuckness
Contemporaries Essays, Stuckness
Stuck in the Future (of the Past)
When I started writing this, in mid-June of 2022, it was 100 degrees in central Illinois. A “heat dome” had settled over much of the United States — it was…
Contemporaries Essays, Stuckness
Introduction to Stuckness
Stuckness might be the prevailing affect of late modernity. In contrast to the humanities’ valorization of sustained attention to the nuance of textuality, or to the accelerated demands on our…
Contemporaries Essays, Heteropessimism
Contemporaries Essays, Heteropessimism
The Age of Anesthesia
Heterosexuality is undergoing a major public relations crisis. From Gallup polls proclaiming Gen Z as the “queerest generation ever” to reactionary pundits inveighing against the death of traditional family values,…
Contemporaries Essays, Heteropessimism
Femcel Heteropessimism
Femcels — the female version of involuntary celibates, or, “incels” — are rapidly gaining visibility and attention, as evidenced by the recent uptick in femcel related content on social media…
Contemporaries Essays, Heteropessimism
How do we write about love of cock?
There’s something embarrassing, shameful, about enormous desire: cuntstruck, dick-drunk, dickmatized, down bad. So much work goes into pretending to be more upright, less addicted, than we really are. When I…
Contemporaries Essays, Heteropessimism
The Rom-Com is Dead, Long Live the Rom-Com
About twenty-five minutes into Joachim Trier’s 2021 film The Worst Person in the World, protagonist Julie is leaving a party where her boyfriend was being annoying. She is enjoying a…
Contemporaries Essays, Heteropessimism
New Men, Same Story: Ted Lasso‘s Heteroformalism
Men are good now — haven’t you heard? Nice guys are having a cultural moment: every online platform has lists of “unproblematic faves,” men like Keanu Reeves, Fred Rogers, or…
Contemporaries Essays, Heteropessimism
The Lover’s Complaint Concerning His Working Conditions
Heteropessimism is often understood as a female complaint. The idea that heterosexuality’s inequities and disappointments are borne disproportionately by women is so axiomatic that Jane Ward could reasonably dedicate The…